Morsi's people will swallow Sisi's magicians

In my high school years I read Ali Shariati's account of the Egyptian pyramids, and reading it was the reason I became a sociologist. Standing before the pyramids, which everyone regards as a great masterpiece of civilization and one of the wonders of the world, Shariati sinks into long contemplation. He goes back to the days when these pyramids were built, and when he looks at these magnificent structures, which inspire admiration in people and draw visitors from every corner of the world, Shariati sees something different from what everyone sees: the paradox of civilization and the tragedy of man.

These extraordinary structures are presented as a sign of what humanity is capable of, yet from where Shariati looks they show nothing but how low humanity can sink. There is humanity's departure from humanity in the very way these pyramids were built, and also in the way people today flock to these places without any awareness of the conditions under which they were built.

Those pyramids, which inspire admiration in humanity, are the result of millions of slaves being made to work, at the cost of their lives, in the harshest conditions. Who knows how many slaves' blood, tears and lives are in each of those stones. Sitting beside those stones, Shariati tries to empathize not so much with the Pharaohs as with the slaves whose lives were lost in the construction of those structures.

In fact, the very existence of these structures is a witness to the greatest evils that man can do to man. But today they are treated as masterpieces of architectural art or of civilization. Those who visit regard the Pharaohs who had these structures built as a product of civilization, without looking at how all of humanity's values were trampled underfoot in these structures. Yet, looked at a little more carefully, what should be seen is what a great weakness the passion for immortality is in man. The lesson to be drawn is that, despite these majestic structures, those Pharaohs could not escape dying. What is more, behind the fundamental motive that produced this wonder of art there is no positive human value whatsoever.

This is the paradox of civilization. What is visible today in the name of civilization is in fact works from which, as we travel the earth, we should observe with admonition what became of those before us. Those before us were also very ambitious in power, splendor and creativity. Yet nothing is left of them.

Egypt, land of the Pharaohs. The name of the land where human beings were enslaved most systematically, where the most complex form of the state was first established, and where man was turned into a servant en masse. Egypt is the place where Pharaoh, feeling his rule threatened on the basis of the interpretation of a dream, did not hesitate to kill all the children in the cradle. It is the place where rulers seized by the lust of power reach a stage at which they are so heedless and so rebellious as to say to all people, "I am your supreme lord."

Egypt is the place to which, whenever there is a Pharaoh who forces people to be his servants, a Moses is surely sent as well.

To the Pharaoh who claimed divinity, Moses of course goes with a warning that is gentle but with a clarity that never bends: "Give up your claim to divinity and let my people go!" But Pharaoh is in no state to agree to do so. After long debates, what he can say to those of his people who have heeded Moses's call is this: "Are you taking another god without my permission?" (Shuara 49).

Yet all that those who followed Moses wanted was freedom, and the way to it passed only through servitude to God.

These days at Rabia al-Adawiya we are watching the epic of people in love with freedom, who repeat the same scenes as they try to break the chains the Pharaohs have bound. In Tahrir Square we witnessed the show of the Pharaoh's magicians. Tahrir became a snake produced by Pharaoh's magicians from the national and international media and from artists, and it covered the square.

Facing it, at Rabia al-Adawiya the friends of Moses, trusting in God, only in God, laid down their own staffs. A great and real dragon that has come to life from them is about to swallow the Pharaoh's false snakes, fabricated by sorcery. The Pharaohs are in a flurry. They meet with panic the uprising of people to whom they assigned no role other than being their slaves. "Will you follow others without our permission? Could you possibly have rulers other than us?"

Yet in the face of the most dignified, most noble and most genuine uprising in the history of the world's revolutions, displayed at Rabia al-Adawiya, the fears of Egypt's Pharaohs are of no use against their appointed hour. The masses who know and recognize the Lord of Moses, of Jesus and of Muhammad have, from this hour on, clothed themselves in the liberating spirit of tawhid, however far Pharaoh may pursue them.

Today Rabia al-Adawiya is not only a revolutionary arena of demonstration but itself a mosque, that is, a place of worship. Those who know that the whole earth has been made a mosque for them were at Tahrir yesterday and are at Rabia al-Adawiya today. There is no miracle in the square itself. The miracle lies in man's will and intention. It is not squares that make people; people make squares.

But today Rabia al-Adawiya is a mosque in the full sense of the word. So much so that it is being used for the last ten days of Ramadan as an i'tikaf site, where people enter into seclusion with God and practice renunciation toward the world.

Look at the meaning of the action: defying the Pharaohs by abandoning the world in asceticism. Changing the world in seclusion with God.

Muhammad Morsi's answer to the junta members who demand a compromise: "With what could you possibly persuade me? I, whose imprisonment is asceticism, whose exile is hijra, and whose death is martyrdom."

What Pharaoh can stand before this spirit?